


I'll Do Right By You (Whether You Want Me To Or Not)

by ArchetypeOfAdespota



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Allura What Have You Done, Angst, Bittersweet, But Your Consolation Prize is Flying a Giant Space Lion, Character Study, Don't Punch Your Bae in The Face Though, Even For These Idiots, Graphic Descriptions of Juice, Gratuitous Purple Prose, Keith's Boy Scout Pouches, M/M, Mature Adult Decisions, Oh yeah I should mention the, Or I guess maybe, Paladin Bond, Sad Ending, Season 3, So That's Neat, That's a Terrible First Date, You Decide, the real world sucks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-22
Updated: 2018-02-22
Packaged: 2019-03-22 15:26:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13767033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArchetypeOfAdespota/pseuds/ArchetypeOfAdespota
Summary: Allura had heard her father and his team talk about the Paladin bond. About the closeness, the shared mindspace that linked them together in battle. They had reveled in it, had called it a gift to know the best of their friends so completely. Perhaps she was naive to think that such closeness came without price.Set during S3E3.





	I'll Do Right By You (Whether You Want Me To Or Not)

**Author's Note:**

> So, I've had this thing sitting unfinished in my folder since forever. Like, "right after season 3 aired" type of forever. Probably a bit late to be topical, but at the time I really wanted to explore this episode. In all of my favorite fics y'know, they find out they're in love and then they're immediately together and damn the consequences. But, season three made me wonder if that was such a good idea. Sometimes being together isn't whats best in that moment. Sometimes other things have to come first. 
> 
> Anyway, I finally dug it out and and slapped a beginning on it, so enjoy my weird character study oneshot.

Flying a Lion isn’t anything like Allura had expected. Perhaps she had rushed in a touch too quickly, but truly, what more preparation could she possibly have? A lifetime of watching her father and his team was more experience than the current paladins had had before they had been called to their Lions. 

But still, it overwhelms her in ways she could never have expected. The Blue Lion’s quintessence is a thrum in the forefront of her mind - an engulfing personality that threatens to supercede her own - and it’s a constant, bewildering battle of wills as she attempts to direct it to her own ends. The others and their Lions are bright stars orbiting around her consciousness, too much and too strong for her to pay any heed to as she struggles merely trying to blast a tiny little gnat of a cruiser thats nipping at the Blue Lion's heels. They leave afterimages like sunspots on the surface of her brain when she gives them too much thought. 

Everything is too much, too fast, and perhaps if the others would leave her be so that she could sort this out herself she might get somewhere with this finicky beast, but no, there is only criticism and chaos, until she is alone and hunted and the silence in her suddenly empty mind deafens her. It is the sudden smallness that leads to her understanding with Blue, and though the whiplash expand-collapse-expand of her mind opening and closing like an iris in so short a time leaves her reeling and queerly exhausted, is is a relief to no longer be fighting the Lion. 

She learns from her mistakes, however. She can feel herself drawing back when the time to form Voltron comes, when the bright stars whirling around her mind’s eye press in too hot and too bright and too close, but the Blue Lion rumbles beneath her feet reassuringly, and when the stars collapse in on her into a too-bright supernova, she does nothing but listen and feel.

And she feels everything.

She can feel Pidge - sharp and cutting and guiding her forward like a laser, and she knows that she can trust this mind’s judgement with her life.. 

She can feel Hunk - warm and steady and larger than life, and she knows that she can trust to him her protection.

She can feel Lance - giddy and effervescent and constantly in flux, and she trusts that he will always do what is needed.

She can feel Keith - forceful and focused and crackling with intensity, and she trusts him to lead her anywhere. 

And she can do nothing but feel for awhile, overwhelmed, and the sudden certainty that she is exactly where she is meant to be, that this is her place, is too broad and sweeping for her to do anything else. 

“Hunk! I’m a leg!” she squeals, because he should understand, he should knows, she trusts that he will know, and she can feel the pride and affection pulsing across the bond from him, and it’s everything. 

The battle is surreal; it’s a wash of thoughts and feelings and triumphs and irritations that are not her own, and when they’ve taken down the battleship and turned their sights on Lotor’s ship, for a split second as their back turns from the record she has the decisive and bizarre thought that this is the correct thing to do, because cool guys don’t look at explosions, which is immediately followed by an enormous wash of exasperation and self-disgust.

When it’s over, when she’s finally drifted back down into her own body and is basking in her- in _their_ success, she finally manages to process some of what she’s feeling, to parse their feelings from her own. 

It’s a relief to recognize the dulled wave of apprehension as Pidge’s as she asks if they’re going after Lotor, to know that the absentminded hunger belongs to Hunk, that the sudden caution is Lance’s. 

“We’ll face him again when we’re ready, says Keith, and Allura basked in the intermingled flavours of pride from her team, tinged with relief from Pidge, bright warmth from Hunk, and from Lance- 

“Roger that, team leader.” 

Allura can practically feel his smile on her own lips, can feel her heart swelling with something huge and heavy, soft and strong, the warmth and the pride of it and the answering echo from Keith - It takes her breath away. Her shock ricochets through the bond like shrapnel, shredding it instantly. Voltron falls apart, and the others startle or laugh or sigh in turn, but her head remains silent in the sudden quiet, save for Blue’s steady presence. 

The disorientation is immense, but it isn’t enough to chase the lingering aftertaste of love from the corners of her heart. 

“I’m sorry!” She gasps, still reeling. “I-I don’t know what happened.”

Hunk and Pidge are quick to reassure her, their own memories as fledgeling paladins still fresh, and they begin the flight back to the castle in good spirits. Lance and Keith, however, remain suspiciously silent.

 

-)(-)(-)(-)(-)(-)(-)(-)(-)(-)(-)(-)(-

 

She finds Lance in the kitchen a bare varga later, rummaging through the fridge for a drink. He greets her cheerfully as he gets down a glass. 

"Sup, Allura? Lookin' for a little Paladin snack? I know, space battles make you way hungrier than you'd think, considering you're mostly sitting down." He calls over his shoulder. He moves to the counter and gives the jug a shake before uncapping it.

Allura doesn't answer, just stops near the table and wrings her hands. Quick and decisive, she had decided on her way here. Give no quarter, leave no room for denial. Only good will come of making them aware of their own feelings. Her voice is strong, her words clear, when she asks,

"How long have you and Keith been in love?" 

Lance sucks in a breath, sharp and sudden. Slowly, he sets down the jug, lowers his glass with a delicate click against the countertop. Then he turns. He slouches backwards, leaning his elbows against the counter. Allura braces herself for denial, for anger, for deflective humor or feigned confusion. 

Lance exhales slowly, measured, letting the air hiss out between his teeth. He tilts his head sheepishly and offers her a small smile, the corners of it stiff with an emotion Allura can't read.

"I guess you felt that, huh? In the bond? Yeah, you're sharp like that, Princess, I shoulda known. I was kind of wondering why the others hadn’t picked up on it yet. Guess it was gradual enough they just never noticed."

"I-" Allura falters. "You- You _know_?"

The smile turns gentle. 

"Allura, we've known for ages."

We.

The both of them. 

This is... Not how she pictured this conversation going. Lance can clearly tell, as well, he offers her a sympathetic look and crosses the kitchen to her side. He pulls out the chair nearest her and gestures her into it with a gentlemanly flourish. 

"Have a seat, Princess. I think this is gonna take some explaining."

She sits. 

Lance takes his time joining her- he goes back and pours his glass of juice first, puts away the jug, grabs a cloth and wipes down the counter where a few drops have spilled. The silence stretches between them, but the thread of the conversation has been gently pulled from her hands. It's not her place to speak, now. 

Lance slides into the chair across from her. Allura watches his long fingers toy with the glass, spinning it idly. A minute passes, and then Lance meets her eyes and speaks. 

"So, Keith and I are in love." He pauses, making a face. "That's so weird to say out loud, geez. But, um, yeah. That's a thing."

Allura opens her mouth to ask a question, though which one she doesn't know. How long have they been together? Why did they hide this? Is this the reason behind their working relationship's recent transformation? - But Lance's sends her a pleading look, and she quiets. 

"Just, let me get through this first, please? It's kind of a mess and I don't want to have to explain some of it twice."

She nods. 

Lance sets his juice aside and starts again. 

"So yeah. We've known for awhile. Since, um, right after we got sucked through that wormhole and we all got separated? A few days after that."

Her eyes widen. That's... Over a decafeeb ago. They've been hiding this, successfully, for so long? She keeps quiet though, as she'd agreed, and listens.

"We were shouting at each other about something stupid, like we always do, and it kind of got out of hand. And the jackass busted my lip and I got him in the nose, and we were both just sitting there on the ground staring at each other, _bleeding_ , and-" Lance cuts himself off to laugh quietly. 

"And he gets this really stupid look on his face and he says, "I think I'm in love with you.""

Allura blinks. She has no idea what expression she bears right now, but Lance seems to find it vindicating; he gestures open handed towards her face, the motion wild. 

"Right?" He whines. "Who just says things like that, in a moment like that? _Keith does_. Remember the time after we freed the Olkari and he blew his own mind talking about how we're all cosmic space dust or something? Or, you weren't there for this, but the day we found Blue, back on earth, he had no problem telling a room full of strangers how he felt all mystically drawn to search the desert for some weird energy. Which, yeah, turned out to be Blue, but you don't just _say_ things like that on Earth."

He slumps down in his chair, then sighs and reaches for his juice. 

"Unless you're Keith. Then you just say or do whatever's on your mind, all the time, never mind the consequences or whether or not people think you're a crazy person." He complains into his glass before taking a sip. He sets it down and glares at it for a moment, lapsing into silence. 

He doesn't speak for long enough that Allura contemplates breaking her vow of silence to ask if he's alright. 

Finally, he seems to come back to himself. He shakes his head, as though to clear it. 

"Sorry. Anyway, so there we are, just beaten the crap out of each other over some bullshit argument, and then the jerk just... declares his love for me. Like that's a thing people do." He closes his eyes. 

"And I guess his particular brand of crazy is catching, because I say it too. Well, not- not like he did. I think it was something like, "Well, get with the program asshole, I've been in love with you since the Garrison." And he says "We never even spoke at the Garrison" and I said "Yeah, because you thought you were too good to talk the rest of us mere mortals." And, yeah. It-"

He clears his throat. 

"We were idiots. It was kind of a mess. That boy wouldn't know romance if it snuck up on him and bit him on the ass." 

He pauses to take another drink, glaring at the pale green liquid as though Keith's emotional reticence is its fault. 

"So, we argue ourselves in a circle again, and then Keith throws up his hands and yanks a couple cold packs out of his stupid boy scout pouches and throws one at me, for my lip you know, and he says, "What's wrong with us, that we can't even do _this_ right.""

Lance's eyes go somewhere far away. 

"And I said, "Look at us, man, we can't do _anything_ right when it comes to each other." And he gets this awful look on his face like I've punched him again. And he asks me, "Then what do we do now?""

"I mean, he had a point, right? What, we'd spent the last six months hating each others guts even while we'd been dragging around a couple of gigantic school kid crushes as baggage. We crashed our lions to one-up each other. We kicked ass together beating Sendak and then fought about it immediately afterwards. Fucking- do you know why I let myself get convinced to take that Nyma lady out in Blue, right before she stole her?"

Allura shakes her head mutely. 

"She said if I didn't she'd just ask Keith instead. That's it, Allura, that's all it took. I let a fifth of the universe's greatest weapon get stolen because I just _had_ to one-up Keith. Worse, a total stranger was able to take one look at me and know that Keith was the right button to push."

Abruptly, Allura realizes something. Lance has not once in this conversation alluded to he and Keith being together, currently. He speaks of Keith like a distant object, an orbiting planet, says "we" without warmth. 

"So. Keith was right. We didn't know what to do. We're not- okay, we're not _total_ idiots. We knew that acting on... Whatever it was that we felt wasn't gonna be a good idea. If we were a mess like that, just fighting over the little things, a relationship was only gonna make it worse. We're just too... much? When we're together? I mean yeah, sometimes in a fight, or when we need to work together it... "

He snorts. "When it's going good it's going great, but when it's bad it's awful."

The words have a cadence to them, like a poem or a scrap of song. 

"Yeah, we're great when we _have_ to work together, but otherwise? We're- you can't look at us bickering over the last of the bacon at breakfast and tell me that it's a good thing."

He shrugs, and that brittle edged smile from the beginning of this conversation comes back. The bottom drops out of Allura's stomach as she finally puts a name to that foreign emotion. 

Lance has a kind, expressive face, with smiles and laughing eyes meant to set a room at ease, to tease and play and lighten the darkest of moods. It's the face of the Blue Paladin, no matter which lions they're piloting now. It's the face of the heart of the team, the one that facilitates relationships, friendship, family, love. The glue that binds them all together.

Bitterness. Bitterness should have no place on that face. 

"So, we decided, what we would do was nothing. We know, we um, we acknowledge? I guess is the word? But we don't let it get any farther than that. Voltron comes first. The Universe comes first. We know we can't afford to mess that up with our..." 

He made a vague, circling gesture, wrist loose. His expression is resigned, tired. _Bitter_.

"Feelings."

Allura makes a pained sound in the back of her throat. He smiles at her, soft and comforting.

"Oh come on, Allura, you should be proud. You've been the one telling us that the team needs to come first, since like, day one."

"This is not what I meant!" She bursts out, bringing her palms down on the table with a smack, clutching futilely at the smooth plasteel. The words feel like they've been ripped from somewhere deep in her chest. "Lance, you can't tell me you've spent all this time hurting for our sakes. You know that's not what any of us would want!"

"Allura," He sighs. He reaches out and places his hand over hers, a warm and steady pressure. "This isn't about what any of us want. It's about what's best. Keith and I are a mess together. You know it, I know it, every planet we've ever landed on knows it. I'm not going to risk anyone's life for my own happiness. What if Keith and I have another fight in the middle of a battle and someone gets hurt? It's happened before, you saw us out there today."

"Yes, I did!" The hand beneath Lance's palm curls into a fist. "I saw you out there today. You were the only thing keeping Keith in check. You _balance_ him Lance, you balance each other. I haven't even seen you have a serious disagreement since Shiro-" 

She cuts herself off with a hiss. Lance's hand squeezes hers, gently. 

"Allura, I _barely_ managed to get Keith to stop today. And nobody's had a serious disagreement since Shiro." He huffs a laugh. "I'm not a monster, Allura, Keith needs us to have his back right now, so I do."

He shrugs. 

Allura stares at him. 

He truly doesn't know, she realizes. He doesn't see the way that he and Keith have grown, have fit around each others sharp edges and smoothed each other out. He doesn't realize what it means for him to have become Voltron's right hand, to have become _Keith's_ right hand. He still believes himself to be the brash, overcompensating boy that had arrived at the castle's doorstep in a runaway Lion, lost and in over his head. 

The man sitting before her is so very different. She not certain that she'd even fully realized that herself, until now. 

"Oh Lance." She whispers. "You've grown so much."

His eyes flash with pain for just a moment, before he smiles at her. 

"Not as much as you, Blue Paladin Allura."

She squeezes her eyes shut, composing herself, forcing away the swell of emotion that threatens to overwhelm her. She opens them with the mask of royalty firmly in place.

"Lance, I- It is your choice. It is always your choice. If you truly do not want to be with Keith, if you think that it's the best choice for _yourself_ , and for _him_ , than I respect that. I would not interfere with that. But if the only thing holding you back from each other is us, is our team, then I cannot allow that. There is so little goodness left free in this universe, Lance. I won't be the one who shutters any more of it away." He voice is firm, and does not waver. 

Lance's eyes harden.

"Thanks, Princess, but I think we've got it covered."

"No, Lance." Allura feels her gaze go sharp, the crystal-glass glare her mother had used only when her word were of crucial importance, when she needed someone to _listen_. 

"This bond that you and Keith have forged may have grown so slowly that the others could not see what was in front of them, but I am not blinded in that way. I felt what you felt, today. What Keith felt. And whether you agree or not, I know that the two of you have the capacity to become something great together. The two of you could take the universe by storm, if you wanted to."

Lance stands. The sudden absence of warmth from his hand over hers is shocking. He picks up his glass from the table and turns to the sink, draining the last of it in one long pull. He flicks the tap on and rinses it, then sets it on the counter and strides past her to the door. He pauses there, one hand resting on the keypad. He looks over his shoulder at her.

"Princess, we've made our decision. Do us a favor and don't make this any weirder or more painful than it needs to be, please?"

He presses at the keypad and strides through the door, leaving Allura to stare at his retreating back before the door closes on him again.


End file.
